Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/266355 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Citation: 
[Journal:] Journal of European Social Policy [ISSN:] 1461-7269 [Volume:] 31 [Issue:] 5 [Publisher:] SAGE Publications [Place:] Thousand Oaks [Year:] 2021 [Pages:] 565-579
Publisher: 
SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks
Abstract: 
Families’ economic wealth is a resource that can provide children with crucial advantages early in their lives. Prior research identified substantial variation of wealth levels between different family types with children from single-parent families being most disadvantaged. The causes of this disadvantage, how much the disadvantage varies between children and how the non-resident parents’ wealth may potentially reduce the disadvantage remain unclear. To address these research gaps, we use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (2002–17) to examine the level of and inequality in wealth for children from single-parent families using recentred influence function regression and decomposition analysis. We replicate earlier findings of a large wealth disadvantage for children in single-parent families. We find that the wealth disadvantage can be mainly explained with compositional differences in household income and employment characteristics. Beyond level differences, inequality between children from single-parent families is higher than for other family types and this inequality can only partly be explained by observed demographic and socio-economic characteristics. When considering the wealth of non-resident parents, the wealth disadvantage of children in single-parent families is reduced but remains substantial.
Subjects: 
Wealth
Family
Children
Inequality
Separation
JEL: 
D31
D1
J1
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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